by Hannah Andrews Our theme at AKA all month has been, “Identity and Belonging.” It could be my theme for the year. Maybe several years. Identity and belonging (or lack thereof) seep into every aspect of my existence as a Baby Scoop Era, closed records, mixed-race adoptee. So here’s my two-cents, beginning literally with my two cents. My first memory is of penny candy and not belonging.
It plays in my head like a grainy old home movie. I’m three or four years old and walking with my adoptive mother, to the corner store. One hand holds hers. The other has my red and black polka-dotted ladybug coin purse. Pre-school-aged me loves that purse. It’s plastic and squeezes open like its wings are spreading open to fly, fly away. And its guts are full of coins. And here’s where the memory sours. There’s a feeling of eyes on you. You recognize it even at a young age. It’s a feeling that makes you swallow hard, then sits like a rock in your little kid tummy. “And who is this little doll?” someone in my mind’s movie says, and I’m introduced by name. “How precious. But she isn’t YOUR daughter, is she?” My mother answers in the affirmative, and even as a small child, I can feel the tension in the space between us. I grasp her hand tighter as if to prove her point: Yes, I am her daughter. Yes, I belong with this pink-skinned, freckle-faced redhead. Little kid me would’ve gladly emptied my ladybug of all her coins in exchange for fitting in—every penny I owned. Memory is tricky. While I believe this to be my earliest recollection, maybe it's more weighted, takes up more space, smushes the others down. Or perhaps it's an amalgamation recollection of all the times this happened on that walk, at church, or wherever. It plays on a loop because it happened time and again. “She must take after her father,” people said. I didn’t. At least not the father who raised me. A few years later, kids at school would ask me, “That’s your mom?” or “Those are your brothers?” They were. And also, they weren’t. I didn’t match. Not my family. Not the other people in my town. Being racially ambiguous and adopted wasn’t so awful. It could’ve been worse. It also could’ve been better. I wanted to blend in with my family, my friends. I didn’t— that made me want to blend in with the wallpaper. “What makes you different is what makes you special” didn’t work for me. Sure, I wanted to be unique, but more so, I wanted to belong, and I never felt like I did. I felt like an alien. From nowhere. From no one. Family tree? Didn’t apply to me. Sure, I had one—the one on which I’d been grafted. I wanted it to be mine. I ached for that sturdy, deep-rooted tree. I loved hearing the stories and history of my parents' ancestors, many of whom had been in the USA “since New York was New Amsterdam,” whatever that meant. They’d come from England and the Netherlands, farmed tobacco, and fought in wars. They left gravestones, obituaries, and generations of descendants, many of whom I loved dearly. But their blood didn’t run through me. “This is yours now,” my adoptive mother told me as we filled out my family tree project for school. As if she could just hand me heritage. “All of this is yours.” And it was. And it wasn’t. Still, I clung to those branches, reached for those roots. As an adult, my ambiguity was embraced more often than not. In bigger cities, without my clearly not genetically related parents standing next to me, people often assumed I was “one of them.” Mothers of boyfriends embraced me as “a nice Jewish girl” or “ a nice Italian girl.” Black people assumed I was “mixed.” Mexican and Puerto Rican people embraced me with a language I didn’t understand, but that they assumed I spoke. I apologized for not speaking Spanish. And the flip side occurred as well. Not often, but also, too often. An over-enunciated, “Do you speak English?” The ugliest of slurs and passive-aggressive slights for whatever race and ethnicity that person had ascribed to me. An occasional cringe-inducing, “I’ve never been with a (fill in the ethnicity here) before.” And lots of “What are you anyway?” I was never sure if I even had the right to be offended. I’m still not. When I finally got my OBC at age 50 and saw I’d once had a Mexican surname, I signed up for Spanish classes. I’d meet my natural mother and honor her with the language of our people. I traced one side of her family to Mexico through DNA and records. When I found her, she was deceased. Her son (my half-brother) told me she'd never spoken Spanish, that her parents had divorced, and she hadn’t known many of her father’s kin. Her mother was mixed race, African-American and Irish. My biological father’s family were from Sicily, England, and Ireland. Most of his ancestors came to the US in the early 1900s. Both sides of my family ended up in Chicago. I was created there. My blood contains traces of my ancestors, traces of people who immigrated, and traces of people who were likely once enslaved. I’ve found cousins and aunts, the “history holders” of my lost families. They’ve shared family trees, birth and death announcements, and copies of draft cards. And snippets of stories from the generations that preceded me. I now have a natural family tree right alongside my adoptive family tree. It’s all mine. And none of it's mine. A disconnect persists. It pokes holes in all of my connections, both paper and blood. I finally put the pieces of my puzzle together after 50 years. And for one moment, maybe even a week, I felt so real. I felt like I came from someone, like I came from somewhere. A breath later, I felt like an alien again. Like I’d just materialized from nothing. I cannot imagine what it is to be a Native American, Indigenous, or intercountry adoptee— those who’ve lost their original homeland, their language, their history, and their family. I do know what it was like as a domestic adoptee— to lose my family, my history. I also know what it's like to look in the mirror and wonder, “Who am I?” Sealed birth certificates, lies and blank spaces on our records, no records, denying cultures… its identity laceration. And it leaves scars. Erasure is trauma. We have to stop erasing people. For me, identity and belonging remain elusive. It is exhausting clinging to the tree of me. Thank you for reading. About the Author: Hannah Andrews (Editor and AKA Board Member) is a US Domestic Baby Scoop Era adoptee. She is not in reunion. Her writing has been featured in print publications, including “A Year In Ink, Vol. 6: What Just Happened,” and Gold Man Review (Issue 14,2025), online publications, including Adoptee Voices E-Zine, SeveranceMag.com, and The Narrative Arc (A Medium Publication). Her blog (a mix of non-fiction, fiction, and poetry) is at medium.com/@writingsbyhannahandrews AKA invites you to hear from members of the extended family of adoption and the surrounding community. While we take great care in curating the content, please know:
5 Comments
Angela
1/31/2025 05:00:17 pm
Beautifully written. Thanks for sharing this, Hannah.
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hannah
2/2/2025 08:16:48 pm
Thank you so much Angela. I'm sorry you too have struggled, but I am glad my words resonated. The adoption community is one place i've been able to find belonging--though we're all different, we share so many of the same feelings. Take care and again, thank you.
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Candace Marie Cahill
2/1/2025 07:25:20 pm
Thank you, Hannah, beautiful and evocative writing.
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Hannha
2/2/2025 08:17:26 pm
Thank you so much Candace!
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Kim Phipps
2/3/2025 10:41:58 am
Thank you for sharing this, Hannah. Beautifully written!
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